L20 - Self as Group Member

Question 1

What is the social identity approach?

Answer 1

people derive a portion of their self-concept from their perceived membership in social groups
- personal identities: self-aspects that make a person unique
- social identities: self-aspects based on group membership
– the more a person values a group, the more strongly they identify with it

examples
- personal identities
– extroverted
– likes dancing
– interested in history
- social identities
– ethnicity
– gender
– race
– profession

Question 2

What are the cognitive processes in social identity formation?

Answer 2

1. social categorization: poeple automatically categorize themselves and others into social groups
   – e.g., race, ethnicity, gender
2. Social identification: once people categorize themselves as part of a group, they adopt the identity of that group
   – self-stereotyping: a person adopts the values and norms of the group
   – creates an emotional bond with other in-group members
3. Social comparison: people make comparisons between groups and do so in a way that tends to be favourable to their in-group which leads to preferential treatment of in-group members
   – in-group favouritism and outgroup bias

Question 3

Describe Tajfel et al.’s minimal group paradigm study (1970).

Answer 3

Ps are randomly and anonymously assigned to one of two groups on the basis of trivial criteria
- e.g., coin toss, preference for paintings

in a subsequent resource allocation task, Ps tend to allocate more resources to in-group members than out-group members

suggests that:
- people readily identify with a social group
- group categorization, even if based on meaningless criteria, tends to trigger in-group favouritism

Question 4

Explain how identity salience depends on context

Answer 4

the extent to which personal vs. social identities are salient depends on the social context
- personal identity is more salient when interacting with in-group members
- Social identity/in-group identity is more salient when interacting with out-group members, especially in an inter-group context
– leads people to think and behave in ways that are consistent with the norms of their in-group

Question 5

What is outgroup homogeneity effect?

Answer 5

people tend to perceive out-group members as more similar to each other and in-group members as more diverse

explained by the context shifts in the salience of people’s identities
- people tend to behave more similarly to their in-group in intergroup contexts
- the other group perceives this similarity in behaviour and concludes that the rival group members are all similar to each other

Question 6

Why do we identify with groups?

Answer 6

1. Evolutionary perspective:
   – in our evolutionary past, humans were in competition for resources so it was useful to form groups to increase safety and secure resources
   – im plies that in-group favouritism is a result of competition between groups for resources
2. Self-enhancement
   – individuals gain personal self-esteem from associating with a successful/positive group
   – leads to:
   – elevating the in-group over the out-group by focusing on positive qualities and achievements of the in-group
   – devalue positive qualities and achievements of an out-group
3. Uncertainty reduction
   – individuals seek to gain certainty about themselves and the world
   – identifying with a group accomplishes this goal by prescribing group norms and offering a framework for how one should be and how to understand others

Question 7

Describe Cialdini et al.’s study on basking in reflected glory (1976).

Answer 7

Method: field study on several American university campuses
- recorded what clothing students were wearing the Monday after a big football match played against a rival university
- asked students’ opinion about their team’s performance

Results
- students were more likely to wear clothing associated with their university if their university team won the football match
- more likely to use first person pronouns (“we”) if the team won and more likley to use third person pronouns (“they”) if the team lost

to maintain a strong self-esteem, people tend to closely associate themselves with a group when it is successful and establish distance from a group when it fails

Question 8

What are the implications for status improvement?

Answer 8

motivation to establish a positive social identity is at the root of intergroup conflict

high-status group members are motivated to maintain status quo

lower-status group members are motivated to improve their status and how they accomplish this depends on the permeability of group boundaries
- i.e., to what extent it is possible to change groups

Question 9

What is possible if group boundaries are permeable?

Answer 9

Individual mobility: lower-status group members seek to individually transfer into the high-status group
- i.e., individual will focus more on their personal identity and accomplishments and distance themselves from their group membership

Question 10

What happens if group boundaries are impermeable?

Answer 10

impermeability of group boundaries results in strong identification with the group

1. social creativity: lower-status group members will modify their perception of their in-group’s standing
   – use alternative dimensions of comparison in order to emphasize the positivity of the in-group (e.g. low SES group place value on creativity and kindness rather than money and power)
   – downward comparison with a different out-group in order to make the current standing of the in-group appear more positive
2. Social competition: lower-status group members band together and advocate for reducing the status difference between groups

Question 11

What is tokenism?

Answer 11

when a high-status group takes in an individual member from a lower-status group

fosters idea that group boundaries are permeable
- positive if meant to foster inclusiveness
- negative if used by higher-status group to maintain its status and avoid criticism

Question 12

What is the self-concept of tokens?

Answer 12

being a token leads to heightened awareness of how one is different from the group they’ve been accepted into
- consistent with distinctiveness theory

creates added performance pressure and can have cognitive consequences

Question 13

Describe Lord & Saenz’s study on the cognitive consequences of being a token (1985).

how does being a token influence cognitive processing?

Answer 13

method:
- led to believe that they were sharing their opinions on everyday topics with three other students via video (actually videotaped confederates)
– videotaped confederates ensures that any observed effects are due to the experimental manipulation and not as a result of the P being treated differently
- Experimental manipulation:
– token: other students are all of the opposite gender as the P
– non-token: other students are all the same gender as the P
- tested memory for this interaction
– received a list of opinions and had to identify whose opinion belonged to whom

results:
- tokens had poorer memory for the interaction than non-tokens
– remembered fewer of the opinions that they had expressed and fewer of the opinions that others had expressed

Question 14

What are implications of the cognitive consequences of tokenism?

Answer 14

tokens’ heightened awareness of distinctiveness from others may shift attention to self-presentation concerns and away from the task at hand leading to disrupted cognitive processing
- impairments to cognitive processing shown in the absence of differential treatment

implications for organizations:
- increasing the number of minority members in an organization should reduce their self-consciousness, decrease pressure, and improve cognitive processes

Question 15

What is prototypicality?

Answer 15

prototype: in-group’s central characteristics, values, and norms for behaviour

prototypical members: people that are most representative of in-group prototype
- tend to have more social influence and serve as a guide for normative behaviour

peripheral members: fringe group members, less typical of the in-group
- tend to have less social influence

Question 16

How does prototypicality and self-certainty relate to each other?

Answer 16

the more strongly people identify with their group, the more they seek to fit the prototype because this provides information about how the self is supposed to be

being a peripheral member of an important group leads to experiencing self-uncertainty
- motivates greater conformity to in-group norms in order to become more prototypical and gain greater self-certainty

Question 17

Describe Hohmann et al.’s study on prototypicality and self-certainty (2017).

does feeling peripheral in a group increase self-uncertainty?

Answer 17

Method: recruited American Ps
- completed a test assessinfg artistic vs. scientific personality
- experimental manipulation:
– peripheral: P’s score is closer to the French average than American average
– Prototypical: P’s score is closer to the American average than French average
- measured self-uncertainty

Results:
- peripheral Ps experienced more self-uncertainty than prototypical Ps
- this should motivate them to identify more with their in-group and behave in a more prototypical way

Question 18

Describe Hohman et al.’s second study on prototypicality and self-certainty (2017).

does self-uncertainty increase in-group favouritism in perhipheral members?

Answer 18

Method: recruited American university students
- experimental manipulation:
– uncertainty: “write about 3 aspects that make you feel the most uncertain about yourself and your future:
– certainty: “write about 3 aspects that make you feel the most certain about yourself and your future”
- completed a personality test and all students got the same personality feedback
– prototypical: profile is similar to other studnets’ at your university
– peripheral: profile is more similar to students at a rival university
- evaluated essays about students’ views of their university
– how much do they prefer a positive essay over a negative essay?

results:
- for peripheral Ps, high self-uncertainty led to more in-group bias, but self-certainty did not
- for prototypical Ps, self-uncertainty did not affect in-group bias

Question 19

What does prototypicality imply?

Answer 19

sometimes peripheral members may identify with an important in-group more strongly than more prototypical members
- peripheral group members experience more self-uncertainty which leads them to identify more with the group and show more in-group favouritism

this reasoning has been used to explain why extreme groups and behaviour are attractive to some people
- extremist groups provide a certain, very clear, and prescriptive direction for the self

Question 20

What are the factors that determine identification with a group?

Answer 20

social context

status and permeability of group boundaries

importance of the group

prototypicality

Question 21

How can intergroup hostility be reduced?

Answer 21

reducing intergroup hostility via identity:
- Common-ingroup identification: bias against out-groups can be reduced if members of different groups can be induced to conceive of themselves to be part of the same group
– notion of the in-groups is enlarged and out-group members are re-categorized to be incorporatied into one’s in-group

Question 22

What is the evidence for common-ingroup identification?

(Cehajic-Clancy et al., 2023)

Answer 22

Method: recruited Serbs living in Bosnia-Herzegovina

experimental manipulation:
- Moral out-group: read stories of Bosniaks behaving in a moral way
- Control: read stories of the everyday lives of Bosniaks

Reported on:
- intergroup moral similarity: e.g., “I think that Bosniaks are just as caring as people in my group”
- common-ingroup identification: e.g., “I identify strongly with being Bosnian which includes all ethnic and national groups
- positive contact intentions: e.g., “I am willing to have members of other nationalities as my close friends,” “I am willing to marry someone who is Bosniak”

being induced to see the out-group member as similar to the in-group led to greater common-ingroup identification which led to more intentions for positive contact